| Bank’s “asset management fee” unreasonable says customer | |
Businesses are complaining that they have been required by Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) to pay fees equal to 2.5 percent of the value of loans. Nguyen Minh Hai, deputy director of Hong Vinh Phat Company says his company borrowed 1.4 billion dong from ACB Bank at the interest rate of 10.5 percent per annum for six months. On November 18, when he visited ACB’s branch in HCM City he was told that if he wants to continue borrowing money, he has to pay an “asset keeping fee” equal to 2.5 percent of the value of the loan.
Hai thinks the fee collection is unreasonable, because the credit contract did not include any provisions relating to the fee. Besides, Hai said, the sum of 2.5 percent of the loan value is really an overly large sum of money. This means that for every one billion dong loaned, businesses will have to pay 25 million dong for just for “keeping assets”.
Hai thinks that in this case, ACB is try to dodge laws by lending money at an interest rate higher than the ceiling interest rate of 10.5 percent per annum. With the fee, the real interest rate Hong Vinh Phat has to pay to the bank is higher than 10.5 percent.
Meanwhile, Le Thanh Hai, a senior executive of ACB said that ACB does not have an “asset keeping fee”, only a “mortgaged asset management fee”. He said that the bank has just begun the fee collection, but denied it’s a way of raising lending interest rates. Hai of ACB said the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) requests commercial banks to keep a close watch over loans and carry out verification before, during and after the loaning.
Therefore, ACB has, though a third party, ACB Asset (ACBA), to carry out the examination process. ACBA itself negotiates directly with clients about the fee.
Hai of ACB said that client Nguyen Minh Hai gave out false information, because the fee he has to pay is not an “asset keeping fee’”, and that ACBA, not ACB, collects the fee. However, on the afternoon of November 19, Nguyen Minh Hai said that ACB called him to say it will not collect the asset management fee from Hong Vinh Phat any more. | |
| VietNamNet/VNE |
